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The   Masses    and.   the 
13  ionaires 

By 
vrilliam  Jackson  Armstrong 


THE  Masses 


AND  THE 


millionaires. 


♦♦  [(•))♦♦ 


LECTURE 


William  Jackson  Armstrong, 

Delivered  before  the  Oakland  Nationalist  Club,  -in 

Hamilton  Hall,  Oakland,  California,  on 

Monday  Evening,  May  26,  1890. 


PRICE,    TEN    CENTS. 


Copyrighted  1890,  by  William  Jackson  Armstrong 


I 


The  Masses  ^Millionaires, 


Fellow-citizens:  The.  highest  attribute  of  man  is  not 
intelligence.  Intelligence  is  common  to  the  brutes.  The 
noblest  characteristic  of  our  race  is  the  capacity  for  the  sense 
■<>f  justice.  That  sentiment  the  brutes  do  not  possess.  But 
among  civilized  or  savage  men  there  is  none  beyond  its 
claim.  Whether  in  marble  palaces  or  African  jungles,  there  is 
no  human    heart  that  does   not  throb  faster  at  its  appeal. 

£g  By  this  fact  the  civilization  of  man  is  possible.     Justice  is 

*~l  the  music  of  history  by  which  man   marches  to  his  destiny. 

»=  The  measure  of  any  civilization  is  the  measure  of  its  justice. 
a  Men  and  women  are  civilized  according  as  they  hate  injus- 

~J  tice.     The  man  who  does  not    feel  the  wrong:  of  his  fellow- 

j*  men  is  a  savage. 

§2  To-day  the  more  enlightened  nations  of  the  world  are  face 
to  face  with  the  greatest  problem  of  justice  that  has  been 
met  in  history.  With  the  work  of  civilization  so  far  ac- 
complished that  there  is  enough  accumulated  wealth  to 
make  comfortable  all  the  people  of  civilized  countries,  there 
remains  before  the  world  the  spectacle  of  almost  infinite  suf- 
fering and  want.  Behind  this  spectacle  of  suffering  is  the 
spectacle  of  inequality  without  corresponding  merit.  Be- 
hind this  spectacle  of  inequality  is  the  specter  of  fear  iu  the 
lives  of  innocent  millions, 

370590 


EX    LIBRIS 


SAX    CARLOS     1769 


ROBERT  ERNEST  COWAN 


473 


The  Masses  *  Millionaires. 


Fell-OW-CITKENS  :  The  highest  attribute  of  man  is  not 
intelligence.  Intelligence  is  common  to  the  brutes.  The 
noblest  characteristic  of  our  race  is  the  capacity  for  the  sense 
of  justice.  That  sentiment  the  brutes  do  not  possess.  But 
among  civilized  or  savage  men  there  is  none  beyond  its 
■claim.  Whether  in  marble  palaces  or  African  jungles,  there  is 
no  human   heart  that  does   not  throb  faster  at  its  appeal. 

|j£  By  this  fact  the  civilization  of  man  is  possible.     Justice  is 

^  the  music  of  history  by  which  man  marches  to  his  destiny. 

cc  The  measure  of  any  civilization  is  the  measure  of  its  justice. 

§|  Men  and  women  are  civilized  according  as  they  hate  injus- 

""J  tice.     The  man  who  does  not    feel  the  wrong  of  his  fellow- 

^  men  is  a  savage. 

f-.  To-day  the  more  enlightened  nations  of  the  world  are  face 
to  face  with  the  greatest  problem  of  justice  that  has  been 
met  in  history.  With  the  work  of  civilization  so  far  ac- 
complished that  there  is  enough  accumulated  wealth  to 
make  comfortable  all  the  people  of  civilized  countries,  there 
remains  before  the  world  the  spectacle  of  almost  infinite  suf- 
fering and  want.  Behind  this  spectacle  of  suffering  is  the 
spectacle  of  inequality  without  corresponding  merit.  Be- 
hind this  spectacle  of  inequality  is  the  specter  of  fear  in  the 
Jives  of  innocent  millions, 

.'570590 


4  THE    MASSES     \M>    THE    MILLIONAIRES. 

A  few  centuries  ago  these  grim  facts  would  have  troub- 
led nobody.  Those  were  ages  of  force  and.  brutality.  Men 
were  indifferent  to  the  sufferiug  of  their  fellows.  The  sense 
of  human  rights  had  not  quickened.  To-day  it  is  different. 
General  Grant  tells  us  in  his  memoirs  that,  knocked  about 
in  his  boyhood  in  many  log  school-houses,  lie  was  told  so 
often  that  a  noun  was  the  name  of  a  thing  that  he  began  to. 
believe  it.  A  similar  fatality  has  overtaken  modern  Chris* 
tianity.  It  has  been  preached  so  long  from  the  pulpits  of 
the  world,  that  there  are  people  even  outside  of  the  churches 
wh o  begin  to  suspect  its  doctrines  of  truth.  To  the  minds 
of  millions  of  men  and  women,  the  equality  and  brother- 
hood of  man  are  no  longer  rhetorical  phrases.  Miraculous 
religion  has  fared  as.it  could;  but,  side  by  side  with  the 
growth  of  hideous  wrongs,  the  growth  of  the  moral  instinct 
and  the  sharpening  sense  of  the  solidarity  of  our  race,  have 
been  the  great  features  of  our  time.  The  presence  of  pov- 
erty and  suffering  in  the  midst  of  plenty  is  felt  as  a  moral  di>- 
cord.  The  conscience  of  civilization  is  troubled.  The  last 
decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  begins  with  an  interroga- 
tion point  for  justice, 

Millions  of  intelligent  men  and  women  are  asking  what 
is  the  matter,  and,  whatever  is  the  matter,  whether  it  cannot 
be  cured.  Other  millions  of  intelligent  men  and  women 
have  begun  to  make  answers  to  this  question.  There  are 
five  millions  of  Socialists  in  Germany.  There  are  ten  mill- 
ions of  incipient  Socialists  in  the  United  States.  The  opin- 
ion of  these  people,  whether  guided  or  misguided,  will  some 
November  morning  make  a  mighty  force  at  the  ballot-box. 
These  thinking  and  intelligent  people  assert  that  injustice  is 
the  matter  with  our  modern  society.  They  assert  that  the 
civilization  of  Christendom  is  trying  to  live  a  lie, — with  its 


I'lli:    MASSES    AND    THE    MILLIONAIRES.  0 

profession  and  its  practice  at  swords'  points.  They  point 
to  the  suggestive  fact  that  for  nineteen  centuries  it  has 
preached  from  its  pulpits  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and 
lived  in  its  marts  by  the  gospel  of  Mammon;  that  its  teach- 
ing and  its  example  have  never  heen  introduced  to  each 
other;  that  they  do  not  speak  as  they  pass  by. 

They  .suggest  that  a  possible  inhabitant  of  Saturn,  looking 
on  this  globe,  observes  the  grotesque  contradiction  of  the 
doctrine  of  universal  love  and  human  brotherhood  taught  on 
.Sundays,  and  the  cut-throat  doctrine  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest  and  the  devil  for  the  hindmost,  practiced  during  the 
remainder  of  the  week — the  spectacle  of  a  civilization  on 
whose  lips  are  the  ethics  of  humanity  and  whose  working- 
scheme  is  a  struggle  for  existence  between  man  and  man 
deadlier  than  the  feuds  of  savagery — a  scheme  of  society  in 
which  morality  and  the  market  have  agreed  not  to  interfere 
with  each  other.  They  answer  that  this  state  of  things  has 
a  cure,  and  that  this  cure  is  for  each  man  to  give  his  labor 
to  his  fellow-men,  and  to  take  from  the  common  product  of 
labor  the  means  for  his  own  life. 

The  people  who  make,  this  charge  against  the  existing 
order  of  things  and  suggest  this  remedy  are  mostly  poor. 
They  have  not  this  world's  goods.  It  has  been  urged  against 
them  that  their  philosophy  is  born  not  of  their  brains  but 
of  their  pockets — where  there  is  plenty  of  room.  It  has 
been  said  that  the  best  cure  for  the  socialist  would  be  to 
give  him  a  house  and  lot.  That  might  cure  the  dishonest 
socialist,  but  it  would  not  meet  his  doctrine.  To  cure  social- 
ism you  must  answer  its  argument.  There  are  wise  and  re- 
spectable men  who  make  answer.  They  assert  that  the 
present  order  of  things  is  the  best  possible  for  this  world. 
They  assert  that  the  philosophy  of  socialism — all  men  for 


b  THE   MASSES    AND   THE    MILLIONAIRES. 

one  man  and  one  man  for  all — is  a  beautiful  dream ;  that  if 
it  became  a  reality  it  would  bring  greater  oppression  than 
is  now  endured.  They  affirm  that  the  world  is  growing 
daily  better  and  happier;  that  its  existing  order  will  in  the 
end  throw  off  its  own  evils.  They  say  that  the  scheme  of 
enlightened  self-interest,  every  man  for  himself,  is  the  only 
scheme  by  which  the  progress  of  man  and  the  evolution  of  his 
faculties  are  possible.  They  say  that  this  scheme  is  scien- 
tific. This  is  their  argument.  Scientific  enlightened  self- 
interest  is  a  splendid  phrase;  it  is  a  part  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge that  can  be  understood  by  those  innocent  of  all 
other  science.  It  can  be  understood  even  by  a  millionaire. 
The  wise  and  respectable  people  who  are  in  love  with  the 
present  order  of  the  world — who  make  this  answer  to  the 
socialist,  are  mostly  comfortable  in  this  world's  possessions. 
They  have  farms,  counting-houses,  professorships,  libraries, 
and  cool  bedrooms  in  the  summer.  Their  philosophy,  also, 
might  be  accused  of  having  origin  in  pockets — where  there 
is  not  so  much  room.  But  there  is  a  more  serious  difficulty 
about  it.  There  is  a  steadily-increasing  number  of  people 
who  do  not  believe  in  it,  and  there  are  steadily-increasing 
reasons  for  their  disbelief.  While  these  respectable  and 
comfortable  people  are  engaged  in  their  libraries  and  banks 
in  demonstrating  that  the  present  industrial  arrangement, 
among  men  is  the  only  scientific  possible  arrangement,  and 
that  it  will  finally  eliminate  inequality  and  injustice  from 
society,  the  facts  in  the  world  outside  do  not  seem  to  pro- 
ceed in  harmony  with  this  view  of  the  case.  Cunning  con- 
tinues to  grasp  the  wealth  of  the  world.  Fraud  piles  up. 
colossal  fortunes  in  the  hands  of  the  few.  Corporations 
corrupt  the  sources  of  public  power.  The  larger  industries 
steadily  absoib  the  smaller,  driving  increasing  numbers  of 


THE    MASSES    AND   THE    MILLIONAIRES.  / 

independent  men  and  women  into  the  dependent  ranks  of 
wage  earners,  the  profits  of  their  labor  running  to  the  hands 
of  the  fortunate.  Monopolies  and  trusts  swallow  for  the  ben- 
efit of  individuals  the  legitimate  opportunities  and  gains  of 
millions  of  men.  A  million  of  honest  women  in  our  great 
cities  slave  for  beggarly  crusts  that  would  not  feetl  the  cat  of 
the  millionaire.  The  world  is  filled  with  discontented  labor. 
By  every  sun  that  rises  we  read  reports  from  some  part  of 
this  republic  of  the  strikes  or  lock-outs  of  thousands  of 
workmen,  significant  of  mighty  personal  suffering  and 
mighty  public  loss.  The  order  of  society  is  riotous  and 
rotten  with  industrial  war.  In  the  midst  of  abundance,  a 
million  of  willing  Americans  are  tramping  for  bread. 

These  are  open  facts ;  nobody  denies  them.  They  are 
bad  for  the  theory  of  the  existing  order  of  things  in  this 
world.  They  are  bad  for  the  assurances  of  the  comfortable 
gentlemen  of  the  libraries  and  parlors,  who  answer  the 
complaint  of  the  socialist.  Their  arguments  would  seem 
to  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  case. 

These  facts  apply  in  greater  or  less  degree  to  the  condi- 
tion of  every  civilized  country  of  the  world.  They  are  the 
facts  which  to-day  are  rocking  the  nations  as  they  have  not 
been  rocked  for  a  thousand  years  in  the  lap  of  war.  They 
are  the  facts  by  the  side  of  which  all  other  facts — of  learn- 
ing, of  art,  of  discovery,  or  commerce,  or  law — are  as  noth- 
ing. They  are  the  facts  which  have  met  civilization  in  its 
pathway  as  the  old  Theban  Sphinx  met  the  traveler,  who 
must  solve  its  riddle  or  die.  They  make  the  problem  of 
our  time. 

But  for  this  occasion  let  us  confine  them  to  our  own 
country.  That  they  should  exist  here  in  their  most  fla- 
grant and  threatening  form   in  the  land  dedicated  to  the 


8  TITi:    MASSES    AND   THE    MILLIONAIRES, 

equal  rights  and  the  equal  chances  of   men,  is  the  most  ex- 
traordinary event  in  history. 

What  is  it  that  lias  happened  ? 

For  a  thousand  years,  covering  the  Dark  Ages,  the  world 
was  ruled  by  force.  Might  was  the  law  of  right.  Hu- 
manity was* a  foot-ball  tossed  by  conquerors.  It  believed 
in  the  divine  right  of  kings  and  lords.  Tt  made  no  in- 
sertion of  its  dignity,  'flic  gentleman  wore  a  sword  ;is 
his  badge  of  power.  The  peasant  slept  on  husks  in  the 
valley,  and  worked  for  the  prince  on  the  hill-top.  There 
were  no  peoples;  there  were  only  lords  and  serfs.  This 
was  believed  to  he  the  natural  order  of  things.  At  length 
there  came  a  change.  The  human  soul  quickened.  It  ln- 
gan  to  be  felt  that  there  were  rights  of  men.  The  people 
sought  power.  They  dethroned  autocrats.  Bv  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century  nearly  every  nation  in  Christendom 
had  achieved  something  of  political  privilege.  Then  on 
the  western  shores  of  the  Atlantic,  a  young  nation  arose 
in  its  might,  bade  ultimate  farewell  to  kings,  threw  out  the 
flag  of  equal  rights,  and  humanity  rose  to  its  full  stature, 
clothed  with  dignity  and  power. 

That  was  America!  That  was  the  achievement  of 
Americans  a  century  ago.  It  was  the  jubilee  of  humanity. 
The  creed  of  Christ  had  touched  t  he  creed  of  the  State.  The 
eye  of  the  world  was  strained  toward  the  new  continent 
With  equal  political  rights  it  was  believed  that  here  would 
be  equal  chances  for  all  men — that  the  race  for  life  would 
be  fair;  that  the  cards  would  not  be  marked — that  the 
dice  in  the  game  would  not  be  loaded. 

The  citizens  of  the  early  republic  were  fellow-laborers 
under  this  inspiring  faith.  Every  man  had  his  farm,  his 
shop,  or  his  trade.     All  were  independent  workers.     There 


THE   MASSES    AX  I)   THE   MILLIONAIRES,  9 

were  no  autocrats  of  industry.  There  was  not  a  tramp  on 
the  continent.  In  the  hardest  stress  of  life  men  stretched 
forth  their  hands  and  reached  those  of  their  fellows,  and 
felt  the  quick  touch  of  human  brotherhood. 

That  bright  picture  of  equality  was  brief.  Unexpected 
elements  entered  civilization.  Steam,  electricity,  and  ma- 
chinery— -the  genii  of  fire  and  force  and  speed — came  to 
destroy  the  simple  order  of  the  past.  Industry  was  warped 
into  colossal  lines.  The  handicrafts  went  to  the  wall.  Ag- 
gregated capital  purchased  the  gigantic  implements  of  the 
new  time.  Human  labor  was  bound  to  the  machine.  Iron 
and  steel  became  despots  harder  than  any  political  tyrants. 
The  wisdom  of  the  fathers  did  not  anticipate  the  problem 
Political  freedom  did  not  comprehend  it.  Parading  its 
liberties,  American  humanity,  like  its  handicrafts,  went  to 
the  wall.  Augustus  Caesar  boasted  that  he  could  rule  the 
Romans  as  he  pleased  as  long  as  he  assured  them  that  they 
were  free.  Lord  Chesterfield,  at  the  age  of  seventy,  w7as  in 
the  habit  of  saying  to  his  old  servant  Tyrawley :  "  Ty,  you 
and  I  have  been  dead  for  many  years  if  we  only  knew  it- 
Let  us  walk  down  town  and  rehearse  our  funeral;" 

When  railroad  corporations  elect  Legislatures  in  fifteen 
American  States,  American  liberty  is  rehearsing  its  funeral. 

For  this  state  of  things  whose  is  the  fault?  That  is  not 
the  question.  The  facts  are  here.  Their  cause  is  human 
stupidity  colossal  as  a  planet.  An  age  of  science  should 
have  sounded  warning  a  half  a  century  ago.  Neglecting 
the  "proper  study  of  mankind,"  it  has  afflicted  us  with  re- 
dundant learning  on  bugs. 

Edmund  Burke  said  that  the  respectable  fabric  of  polit- 
ical society  was  the  result  of  the  blundering  of  one  part  of 
mankind  operating   with  the   villainy  of  the  other.     That 


1(>  Till:   MASSES    \Ni>  THE   MILLIONAIRES. 

has  been  the  industrial  history  of  the  Dnited  States.  Play- 
ing with  forces  so  strange  and  mighty  that  they  have 
changed  the  face  (if  the  world,  we  have  drifted  into  a  new 
epoch  of  civilization,  and  continued  to  apply  to  its  problems 
the  wisdom  of  the  ancients.  Attempting  to  carry  the  com- 
merce of  the  Atlantic  in  the  galley-boats  of  the  Romans, 
would   he  idiocy  less  stupendous. 

Two  hundred  years  ago,  the  common  sense  and  the  stat- 
utes of  England  made  it  a  crime  to  make  monopolies  in  the 
food  of  the  people.  To-day  a  committee  of  the  American 
Congress  finds  on  investigation  that  four  butchers  in  the 
settlement  of  Chicago  have  "  cornered  "  the  meat  of  two- 
thirds  of  the  continent.  The  man  who  corners  the  "meat  of 
the  masses"  should  hang — by  the  side  of  his  dressed  meat. 

"Combine  or  die!"  has  become  the  motto  of  modern 
trade.  Not  less  than  seventy  American  industries  have 
been  forced  into  monster  trusts,  to  hold  up  prices  and 
keep  profits  in  the  purses  of  the  few.  A  half  a  dozen  pools 
threaten  to  presently  control  the  bread,  butter,  and  boot- of 
the  United  States. 

Even  the  solemn  gentlemen  who  make  our  shrouds  anil 
coffins  have  formed  a  pool  under  the  name  of  the  ''Na- 
tional Burial-Case  Association."  At  the  sound  of  this 
soothing  and  respectable  title,  we  do  not  feel  quite  sure  that 
we  are  not  making  a  mistake  in  lingering  above-ground. 
We  have  a  sense  that  we  may  not  he  in  quite  the  right 
company.  We  feel  that  we  may  owe  it  to  ourselves  to 
patronize  these  decorous  gentlemen  and  get  buried — and 
join  the  respectable  majority. 

Not  long  ago  these  lugubrious  gentlemen  met  in  melan- 
choly conclave  in  Philadelphia,  and,  imagining  themselves 
in  a  cemetery,  proceeded  to  lay  a  tax  on  death.     Their 


THE    MASSES    AND    THE    MILLIONAIRES.  11 

action  to  keep  up  the  prices  and  down  the  number  of  coffin? 
was  kept  secret,  for  fear  the  doctors  might  become  dis- 
couraged and  mortality  lessened. 

Then  the  dealers  in  old  rags  and  paper  formed  a  trust 
in  Cleveland,  to  deal  with  the  old-rag  problem — of  how 
to  cut  down  the  enormous  profits  of  the  women  of  our 
country  out  of  the  contents  of  their  rag-bags.  The  decree 
of  the  old  rag-barons,  issued  in  solemn  council,  ran:  "No 
reduction  in  prices  for  old  rags  without  consulting  the 
syndicate." 

Half  a  dozen  gigantic  monopolies,  headed  by  their  king, 
have  well-nigh  appropriated  the  government  of  the  United 
States.  Their  king  is  the  railroads — the  monopoly  of 
transportation.  These  monopolies  have  assumed  functions 
of  power  and  privileges  of  taxation  unfamiliar  to  a  Persian 
shah  or  the  Russian  czar.  Actual  statistics  upon  this  sub- 
ject prove  that  the  taxes  in  excess  of  fair  profits  levied  by 
these  monopolies  upon  the  American  people  are  sufficient 
to  carry  on  three  perpetual  foreign  wars. 

By  the  force  of  combination,  every  ton  of  coal  burned 
in  the  United  States  costs  the  consumer  one-third  more 
than  its  actual  price,  with  fair  profits  to  the  monopoly 
handling  it. 

The  coal  pirates  of  Pennsylvania  and  adjacent  States 
thus  mulct  from  a  patient  people  a  yearly  tribute  of  forty 
millions  of  dollars.  That  "octopus  of  American  trusts," 
the  Standard  Oil  Monopoly,  has  piled  up  its  two  hundred 
millions  of  capital  by  the  same  conspiracy — a  tax  upon 
the  people's  heat  and  light,  "whipped  from  the  nation's 
pocket,"  equal  to  the  cost  of  a  continual  war  with  Spain  or 
Mexico. 

Exemplary   among  these  tender-hearted   monopolies   is 


12  THE    MASSES    AM>    THE    M  I  l.l.K  >NA  u;  KS. 

the  gigantic  Western  Union  Telegraph  Combination,  which, 
with  the  confident  digestion  of  :i  Dodo,  swallowed,  a  quar- 
ter of  a  century  ago,  sixty  different  companies  al   a  :_r 1 1 1 1 > . 

With  thirty-live  millions  of  dollars  of  actual  assets,  this 
monopoly  collects  interest  off  the  public  on  a  nominal 
.-lock  capital  of  one  hundred  millions  of  dollars,  the  slight 
difference  between  substance  and  shadow  being  fifty-five 
millions  of  pure  water;  thus  levying  upon  the  people 
of  the  United  State.-,  by  reason  of  this  fictitious  stock,  a 
tax  equal  to  that  on  a  permanent  debt  of  $150,000,000  of 
three  per  cent  government  bonds — the  American  and  civ- 
ilized way  of  doing  it.  Add  to  the  extortion  of  this  mo- 
nopoly that  of  the  Chicago  butchers  on  the  meat  of  the 
Great  West,  and  yon  can  fight  England  and  Canada  with 
the  spoils  every  day  in  the  year. 

The  profits  of  the  American  railway  barons] are  Levied, 
in  all,  on  a  fictitious  debt  of  four  thousand  million*  of  dol- 
lars! That  would  support  a  perpetual  war  against  the 
Russian  czar  to  aid  the  cause  of  the  Nihilists. 

The  robberies  of  the  other  American  trusts  and  corpora 
fcions  would  maintain  another  war  against  the  remaining 
nations  of  Europe;  or,  in  the  year  1890,  the  people  of  the 
United  States  can  wage  a  standing  fight  against  the  civil- 
ized world,  with  more  money  in  their  pockets,  than  in 
suffering  tin  exactions  of  their  own  industrial  tyrants. 
And  yet  that  stupid  generation  of  the  American  father- 
plunged,  like  school-hoys,  into  revolution  for  a  three-cent 
tax  on  tea!  They  were  young  and  callow.  They  had  not 
learned  the  patient  ox-eyed  philosophy  which  come-  of 
high  civilization  in  the  golden  age  of  trusts.  A  hundred 
and  fifty  American  industries  are  shuffled  in  the  hand-  of 
pool-mongers  like  a  deck  of  cards.      An  American  billion- 


THE    MASSES    AND   THE   MILLIONAIRES.  13 

aire  buys  up,  at  a  stroke,  seventy  coal  mines,  within  as  many 
miles  of  St.  Louis,  to  steal  the  cheapness  of  warmth  from 
his  fellow-men. 

Think  again  of  these  sweet-mannered  modern  buccaneers 
— the  great  American  railroads!  The  National  Rich 
Man's  Club — the  caucus  of  millionaires — sitting  as  the 
United  States  Senate,  reports,  in  a  swift  spasm  of  confidence, 
after  a  careful  investigation,  that  these  railways,  the  com- 
mon carriers  of  the  land,  which  have  received  their  fran- 
chises and  privileges  from  the  people,  levy  a  tax  on  their 
benefactors  which  the  National  Congress  would  not  dare 
assume.  A  committee  of  the  New  York  Legislature, 
making  similar  investigation,  confirms  this  report  by  stating 
that  the  tribute  laid  by  these  corporations  upon  the  nation 
is  one  which  "no  government  would  dare  levy  upon  any 
people." 

Approach  the  gentlemen  who  sit  in  the  gilded  palaces  of 
these  corporations,  and  ask  their  terms  for  the  shipment  of 
any  new  product  of  labor,  and  you  are  submitted  to  an 
inquisition  as  to  the  profits  of  your  private  business  in  the 
manufacture  of  that  commodity  which  the  most  despotic 
State  would  blush  to  impose  on  its  subjects. 

The  rule  of  robbery  with  these  Robin  Hoods  of  the 
modern  highway  is  "all  that  the  traffic  will  bear."  Their 
motto  of  prudence  is  not  to  kill  the  goose.  But  sometimes 
the  goose  expires  under  the  plucking.  A  Nebraska  farmer 
read  in  his  weekly  paper  the  market  price  for  corn.  Be- 
lieving that  there  was  a  fair  profit  for  his  labor,  he  shipped 
his  entire  harvest  by  the  neighboring  railway  to  the  great 
city,  and  awaited  his  financial  ^returns.  They  promptly 
came.  They  were  a  lull  against  the  farmer  for  fifteen  <l<r/- 
largj — the  balance  in  favor  of  the  railroad  after  deducting: 


14  THE   MASSES   AND   THE   MILLIONAIRES. 

the  selling  price  of  the  corn.  The  farmer  hunted  up  an 
ancient  algebra  of  his  school-days,  computed  and  paid 
a  minus  profit.     The  next  year  he  hunted  rabbits. 

On  the  rich  prairies  by  the  Missouri,  the  average  estimate 
for  shipping  three  hundred  bushels  of  corn  to  market  is 
two  hundred  bushels  for  the  railways. 

That  is  what  is  the  matter  with  the  American  farming 
industry!  Not  Long  ago  a  governor  of  Kansas  in  a  mes- 
sage to  the  Legislature  of  h\>  State,  said:  "If  the  extortion 
of  our  railways  is  not  speedily  corrected,  agriculture  in  the 
western  half  of  this  Suite  will  have  to  be  abandoned. 
Only  the  marvelous  wealth  and  productive  energy  of  the 
State  have  thus  tar  enabled  the  people  to  pay  such  sums 
annually." 

Under  the  exactions  of  this  Caesarian  brigandage,  the 
farming  lands  of  that  imperial  State  are  passing  rapidly 
into  the  dead  hand  of  Eastern  pawn-brokers.  A  recent 
memorial  to  its  representatives  in  Congress  from  citizens  of 
that  State,  recites  that  a  -ingle  lawfirm  in  an  inconsiderable 
Kansas  town  holds  eighteen  hundred  mortgages  on  as  many 
Kansas  farms.  An  eloquent  California!!  asserts  that  the 
railroad  monopoly  of  his  State  has  gone  into  partnership 
with  every  farmer  in  California,  "with  the  corporation  on 
top." 

Computing  generously  for  every  cost,  including  running 
expenses,  interest  on  invested  capital,  and  replacement  of 
worn-out  tracks  and  cars,  a  United  Stat>-  citizen  can  be 
transported  from  San  Francisco  to  Boston  in  a  twenty- 
thousand-dollar  Pullman  coach  for  a  cost  of  less  than  two 
dollars.  A  United  States  hog  can  be  carried  over  the  same 
ground  for  the  same  price.  The  railroad  companies  charge 
the  citizen   for  this  ride  one    hundred  and  thirty  dollars. 


THE    MASSES    AND    THE' MILLIONAIRES.  15 

They  charge  the  hog  only  six  dollars  and  a  half.  That  is 
the  advantage  in  the  United  States  of  being  a  hog!  The 
advantage  of  being  a  hog  is  the  same  as  that  of  being  a 
railway.     But  we  can't  all  be  hogs. 

An  Irish  car  driver  in  the  city  of  San  Francisco  points 
to  the  central  building  of  the  great  railway  corporation, 
and  with  the  graphic  rheotric  of  his  race  informs  the  tender- 
foot stranger  that  "Inside  of  them  walls  is  the  whole  State  of 
California!"  The  information  is  superfluous  to  the  native 
sons  of  the  Golden  West,  They  know  their  master.  How 
long  will  Americans  endure  these  masters? 

These  hideous  facts  are  only  pimples  on  the  body  of  the 
chartered  corruptions  of  our  time.  The  railroads  simply 
accept  the  business  morals  of  the  age — save  that  they  run 
them  by  steam.  Into  the  hands  of  these  giant  monopolies 
a  confiding  nation  has  surrendered  rights  and  powers  over- 
shadowing and  corrupting  its  own  authority.  If  you  would 
touch  tor  wholesome  legislation  the  hem  of  the  garments  of 
power,  go  no  longer  to  Washington.  American  sovereignty 
has  retreated  into  the  offices  of  corporations.  Against  the 
gold  which  was  a  conquered  people's  ransom,  the  Spartan 
tyrant  threw  the  weight  of  his  sword.  Against  the  liberties 
of  a  robbed  nation  the  gigantic  corporations  of  this  repub- 
lic throw  the  weight  of  their  ill-gotton  gold.  Mr.  Jay 
Gould  informs  an  investigating  committee  of  the  New  York 
Legislature  that  the  railroads  have  gone  out  of  politics,  hav- 
ing found  it  cheaper  to  buy  legislators  than  to  elect  them! 
Lord  Eldon  said:  "Corporations  have  neither  souls  to  be 
saved  nor  bodies  to  be  kicked."  One  would  believe  that 
this  noble  lord  had  been  making  American  studies  of  the 
entities  he  described. 

We  are  in  the  midst  of  an  epoch    facing  despots  mure 


Ill  Till:    MASSES     \M>    mi;    Mll.I.U  »>AH;i.-. 

grim  than  all  the  autocrats  of  history.  The  barbarous  feu- 
dal lord — tht  baron  of  the  hill-top — allowed  bis  serfs  their 

crust  and  ale,  and  to  sleep  without  tear  in  their  hut-  at  the 
foot  of  hi>  castled  crag.  The  despot  of  our  modern  indus- 
try drives  enlightened  freemen  t<>  starvation  and  despair. 
By  recent  statistics  of  the  Onited  States  Labor  Department, 
one  million  of  willing  Americans  are  tramping  the  streets  of 
our  cities  and  the  highways  of  the  land  huuting  lor  wprk  and 
bread.  Think  of  that  for  the  '•  best  government  the  sQu 
ever  shone  upon!"  With  grain  in  our  fields  to  feed  the 
hunger  of  a  planet,  that  is  a  spectacle  to  discredit  the  in- 
telligence of  any  epoch  of  history.  If  this  is  civilization, 
what  is  barbarism ?  In  my  judgment  that  human  society 
only  is  a  success  which  i'vt-A^  and  shelters  all  its  honest 
mem! 

Political  privilege  has  failed  to  solve  the  problem. 
Equal  rights  have_not  saved  the  equal  chances  of  men. 
American  liberty  has  not  proved  itself  the  last  wisdom  of 
time.  The  magic  exhilaration  of  pinching  a  ballot  is  lost 
on  an  empty  stomach.  Equal  rights  pall  on  the  fancy  of 
the  citizen  uncertain  of  a  square  meal. 

The  vote  i.-  no  longer  the  symbol  of  American  equality. 
The  moneyless  man  and  the  millionaire  do  not  make  an 
equation  on  election-day-.  By  a  hundred  indirections  the 
owner  of  a  million  dollars  may  multiply  his  vote  to  a  hun- 
dred or  a  thousand.  The  sense  of  American  equality  has 
be< -ii  lost.  The  eagle  has  become  a  little  less  proud.  His 
countenance  is  sickly.  His  win--  droop.  The  Fourth  of 
July  orator  no  longer  steps  nimbly  to  the  front.  Something 
has  happened.  Something  is  the  matter.  He  hardly 
knows  what.  But  it  has  dawned  even  upon  his  exuberant 
optimism  that  thing-  are  no  longer  as  they  were.     He  has 


THE    MASSES    AND   THE    MILLIONAIRES.  17 

heard  of  an  election  in  Ohio — a  million  of  dollars  eloping 
with  a  thimbleful  of  brains  and  becoming  United  State- 
Senator.  He  has  heard  of  a  syndicate  lock-out  in  the  coal 
fields  of  Pennsylvania  to  raise  the  price  of  coal,  and  which 
has  written  despair  over  the  doorways  of  a  hundred  thou- 
sand laborers.  He  has  heard  of  the  corner  on  meat  by 
the  four  butchers  of  Chicago.  He  is  saddened.  He  goes 
home;  his  occupation  is  gone.  The  sawdust  is  out  of  the 
great  American  doll-baby — the  Fourth  of  July. 

What  has  happened?  Civilization  promised  the  toiling 
masses  of  the  world  the  lifting  of  its  weary  burdens.  It 
promised  liberty,  equality,  prosperity.  It  has  not  kept  it> 
promise.  American  civilization  promised  most  of  all.  It- 
lips  were  roses.  It  promised  to  all  men.  There  is  disap- 
pointment. A  country  whose  products  will  nourish  a  bill- 
ion of  men-  whose  machinery  will  supply  the  planet — 
scarce  sixty  millions  on  its  soil,  a  million  of  men  begging 
for  the  privilege  to  earn  their  bread.  That  is  civilization 
with  a  vengeance! 

Why  has  the  doctrine  of  equal  rights  in  the  State  failed 
to  soften  the  inequality  of  conditions  between  men?  With, 
the  creed  of  human  brotherhood  on  its  lips,  why  does  our 
civilization  deepen  the  gulf  between  classes?  The  money- 
less workingman  and  the  cunning  millionaire  side  by  side 
in  the  gates  of  the  twentieth  century!  How  came  they 
here  together?  Has  the  race  between  these  two  been  hon- 
est ? 

Three-quarters  of  a  century  ago,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
epoch  of  steam,  wise  men  said:  "  We  have  arrived  at  the 
golden  age;  the  giants  have  come  to  bear  the  burdens  of 
men.  The  gods  of  fire  and  force  will  enrich  this  fair  world; 
there  will  be  enough  for  all.     Poverty  will  vanish  like  a 


18  THE    MASSES    AND   THE    MILLIONAIRES. 

dream.  The  music  of  wheels,  the  laughter  of  steam  and 
steel,  will  take  the  place  of  the  groans  of  men.  There  will 
be  leisure  for  the  heart  and  brain  of  our  race" 

What  a  mockery  that  golden  vision  appeals  to-day! 
Three-quarters  of  a  century  have  passed.  The  gods  have 
done  their  part.  The  wealth  of  the  world  has  multiplied  a 
hundred-fold.  Civilization  has  grown  rich — rich  beyond 
prophecy.  The  gold  of  the  Caesars  and  the  treasures  of  the 
old  East — of  the  nations  by  the  "  Oxus  and  the  Ind  " — are  as 
a  pallid  dream  beside  the  imperial  wealth  of  modern  States. 
That  old  opulence  compared  with  ours  was  as  their  crude 
galley-boats  to  the  queenly  ships  that  cleave  our  modern 
seas. 

The  machinery  of  the  two  Anglo-Saxon  nations — Amer- 
ica and  England — are  equal  in  producing  power  to  one 
billion  of  men.  Its  products  would  gladden  the  great  hu- 
man heart  of  this  world.  It  would  soften  the  poverty  of 
the  planet.  It  would  feed  the  hunger  of  savage  and  civ- 
ilized men — and  honest  civilized  men  still  ask  for  bread  ! 

In  1860  the  wealth  of  the  United  States  was  $16,000,- 
000,000.  To-day  it  is  $55,000,000,000— forty  billions  in 
thirty  years!  Where  is  that  wealth?  where  is  that  money? 
Let  us  see! 

It  was  Daniel  Webster  who  said,  "  The  freest  govern- 
ment cannot  long  endure  where  the  tendency  of  the  law  is 
to  create  a  rapid  accumulation  of  property  in  the  hands  of 
the  few."  It  has  been  wisely  asserted  that  the  constitutions 
of  free  States  are  made  to  prevent  the  encroachments  of 
capital — that  the  diffusion  of  wealth  is  the  secret  of  a  na- 
tion's power. 

"  That  nation  is  the  most  prosperous  which  contains  the 
greatest  number  of  happy  homes,"  eloquently  declares  the 
chief  of  our  national  labor  department. 


THE   MASSES    AND   THE   MILLIONAIRES.  19 

Thirty  years  ago  you  counted  the  men  of  this  country 
who  owned  a  million  dollars  on  your  finger  tips.  To-day 
there  are  seventy  fortunes  in  the  United  States  of  more  than 
twenty  millions  each.  Poor  hut  respectable  people  worth 
only  a  million  or  two  of  dollars  each  are  numbered  by  the 
thousands.  No  country  town  sets  up  pretensions  to  re- 
spectability without  having  at  least  one  of  these  represent- 
atives of  genteel  poverty  as  an  inhabitant. 

The  town  of  Chicago  has  over  two  hundred  persons 
with  fortunes  of  from  one  to  fifty  millions  each.  A  local 
newspaper  of  that  region  points  with  pride  to  the  fact  that 
every  dollar  of  the  wealth  of  these  gentlemen  has  been 
made  within  the  past  fifteen  years!  "We  would  have  ex- 
pected better  of  Chicago,  where  conscience  is  notably  act- 
ive— and  where  they  have  all  the  meat;  but  this  is  com- 
mendable rapidity. 

They  do  it  better  in  the  city  by  the  Golden  Gate,  where 
an  impoverished  citizen  worth  only  a  few  hundred  thousand 
dollars  has  made  two  millions  in  a  day. 

They  do  it  better  in  some  other  American  localities. 
Six  months  before  his  death,  it  was  known  in  the  commer- 
cial world  that,  by  the  shrinkage  of  values,  the  great  Van- 
derbilt  had  lost  nearly  fifty  millions  of  his  wealth.  But 
almost  in  the  face  of  that  dread  hour  which  swung  behind 
him  the  gates  of  all  earthly  fortune,  the  great  billionaire, 
by  a  single  gigantic  stroke,  regained  the  lost  stake.  Hang- 
ing to  life  by  the  eyelids,  he  quietly  manipulated  a  few 
railroads — a  game  he  understood.  He  secretly  depressed  the 
value  of  their  stocks.  Then  he  sent  agents  into  the  market 
to  buy  them  up  wholesale.  The  stocks,  being  in  demand, 
rose  to  unprecedented  worth.  Then  Croesus  unloaded,  as- 
tonished the  world,  and  died  with  the  greatest  private  fort- 
une known  to  history  intact. 


20  THE    MASSES    ANT)    THE    MILLIONAIRES. 

That  is  what  a  dying  man  can  do  in  New  York,  under 
the  laws  of  American  industry  !  But  the  fifty  millions  in 
the  purse  of  the  billionaire  represented  the  wreck  of  the 
little  fortunes  of  a  thousand  innocent  men  and  women, 
while  a  hundred  gamblers  of  Wall  Street  fattened  on  the 
spoils. 

Three  Americans  of  our  generation  severally  beginning 
life  with  a  bundle  of  firs,  the  deck  of  a  ferry-boat,  and  a 
mouse-trap,  have  amassed  fortunes  of  one  and  two  hundred 
millions  each.  That  demonstrates  the  capacity  of  the 
American  mouse-trap.  These  are  our  modern  Caliphs  of 
Bagdad. 

There  are  one  hundred  private  fortunes  in  the  United 
States,  aggregating  03,000,000,000 — one-twentieth  of  the  en- 
tire wealth  of  the  American  people  !  There  are  one  hundred 
thousand  Americans  whose  combined  possessions  constitute 
more  than  one-half  of  the  property  of  the  United  States. 
One-half  of  the  wealth  of  the  nation  in  one  hundred  thou- 
sand purses  ! 

That  is  what  has  become  of  the  wealth  of  the  American 
people!  That  is  the  answer  to  the  question  of  what  has 
been  done  with  the  riches  of  the  nation  produced  by  the 
genii  of  modern  science  and  invention.  That  is  what  has 
been  accomplished  in  thirty  years  under  the  best  govern- 
ment the  sun  ever  shone  upon  ! 

This  is  the  answer  of  the  land  of  the  Declaration  and 
equal  rights!  These  thrifty  gentlemen  have" simply  frozen 
out  more  than  one-half  of  their  sixty  millions  of  fellow- 
citizens. 

The  money  made  by  the  common  forces  and  the  common 
toil  of  the  nation  is  in  those  private  heaps.  The  till  of  civil- 
ization has  been  tapped. 


TIIK    MASSES    AND    THE    MILLIONAIRES.  21 

la  thirty  years  more  the  properly  of  the  country,  unless 
prevented,  will  he  in  half  as  many  hands  as  now.  Com- 
pared with  the  wealth  which  has  been  produced,  the  Amer- 
ican people  have  remained  poor.  Millions  of  honest  toilers 
have  remained  only  less  than  beggars.  The  English  phi- 
losopher, Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  tells  us  that  ninety  per 
cent  of  the  producers  of  England  have  no  homes. 

An  eloquent  pen  has  written:  "It  was  hoped  in  the 
dawning  era  of  modern  invention  that  all  servile  and  ex- 
hausting toil  would  be  lifted  from  man  ;  that  all  the  neces- 
saries of  life  would  be  so  multiplied  that  the  pool-  would 
cease  to  want."  It  was  John  Stuart  Mill  who  affirmed 
that  it  was  questionable  whether  all  the  mechanical  inven- 
tions had  ever  lightened  the  evil  of  any  human  being. 

But  there  are  those  mountains  of  wealth !  Here  are 
these  valleys  of  poverty!  Between  them  is  significance. 
There  is  a  connecting  link.  What  is  that  link  ?  Shrewd 
men  in  the  streets  tell  us  that  it  is  "sagacity,"  "energy," 
"enterprise,"  "brains."  "  Smart"  men  in  the  colleges  say 
that  it  is  the  "  wages  of  superintendence." 

American  common  sense  and  morality  begin  to  call  it  by 
other  names  not  so  sweet.  These  names  are  "injustice," 
"fraud,"  "cunning,"  "  robbery" — "humanity  pillaged  by 
buccaneers." 

But  let  us  not  go  too  fast.  American  intelligence  and 
morality  may  be  wrong.     They  may  need  enlightenment. 

There  is  a  curious  thing  called 

POLITICAL  ECONOMY. 

They  have  it  in  the  colleges.  It  is  in  preservation  there. 
It  should  be  approached  with  care  and  reverence.  It 
has   sometimes  been  handled   by  kings ;  but  modern  legis- 


22  THE   MASSES   AND   THE   MILLIONAIRES. 

lators  have  always  been  afraid  of  it.  They  have  been 
afraid  that  if  they  got  too  near  it  something  might  happen — 
that  it  might  explode.  It  is  two  or  three  thousand  years 
old.  Something  has  been  known  of  it  for  that  time.  The 
Pharaohs  had  a  sample  of  it.  But  it  has  been  called  a 
science  for  not  much  more  than  a  hundred  years.  A  very 
wise  man  stated  its  laws  in  the  latter  part  of  the  last  century. 
His  name  was  Smith.  He  believed  devoutly  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  his  science,  but  he  never  dreamed  what  a  wild 
African  terror  his  aristocratic  name  would  inspire  among 
the  wise  men  of  this  world  who  should  come  after  him. 

This  science  assumes  that  there  is  enough  work  in  this 
world  for  every  man  and  woman  ;  that  they  can  always 
find  this  work  near  at  hand;  that  there  will  always  be 
enough  products  of  human  labor — food,  shelter,  and  cloth- 
ing— to  go  round  — and  never  too  few  or  too  many;  for  a 
mysterious  thing  called  "Supply  and  Demand"  attends  to  all 
that.  This  science  assumes  that  there  will  never  be  too  few 
or  too  many  laborers  in  one  kind  of  work;  because  if  there 
are  too  few,  the  products  of  that  work  will  become  scarce 
and  dear,  the  wages  high,  and  other  laborers  will  come  in  ; 
if  there  are  too  many,  the  products  of  the  work  will  be 
plentiful  and  cheap,  the  wages  low,  and  laborers  will  go 
into  some  other  occupation  where  there  is  greater  demand — 
that  another  ni3Tsterious  thing,  called  "  Freedom  of  Con- 
tract," will  take  care  of  all  that. 

That  science  tells  us  that  competition  in  each  industry, 
and  between  the  various  industries,  will  keep  the  price  of 
products  reasonable  and  the  profits  of  the  various  industries 
uniform  and  equitable,  giving  each  man  a  fair  chance  in  the 
struggle  for  life. 

The   scheme  of   this   beautiful   science,  when  they  had 


THE    MASSES    AND   THE    MILLIONAIRES.  23 

worked  out  all  its  mysterious  details, — capital,  wages,  profit, 
rent,  interest,  etc., — they  called  by  an  elegant  French  name, 
laissez  /aire — the  "let-alone,"  or  "  let-go  "  scheme.  Then 
they  let  it  go.  They  asserted  that  it  had  been  going  for 
two  or  three  thousand  years,  and  that  it  was  the  only  scheme 
that  would  go  in  this  world  and  leave  human  beings  the 
chance  for  liberty  and  happiness. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  wisdom  in  this  splendid  and  elab- 
orate science.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  truth  that  has  not 
been  entirely  escaped  by  its  mysterious  doctrines.  The  study 
of  these  doctrines  has  brought  a  great  deal  of  knowledge 
as  well  as  a  great  deal  of  insanity  into  this  world.  There 
must  always  be  some  insanity  in  anything  which  is  respect- 
able. This  science  is  respectable,  but  it  is  not  fascinating. 
Mark  Twain  assured  his  wife  concerning  their  first  baby 
that  he  respected  it,  though  he  did  not  love  it. 

This  scheme  called  political  economy  is  believed  in  im- 
plicitly by  a  great  many  English  and  American  college 
professors.  That  settles  its  social  status.  It  is  a  pet  in 
nearly  all  the  colleges  of  the  United  States,  except  Johns 
Hopkins,  where  they  are  studying  it,  along  with  other  curios- 
ities, to  see  what  it  is  made  of.  Inside  of  some  of  these  institu- 
tions called  universities,  where  they  teach  theology,  astron- 
omy and  the  dead  languages,  it  is  perfectly  satisfactory. 
The  professors  get  five  thousand  dollars  a  year;  the  students 
are  the  sons  and  daughters  of  comfortable  families,  where 
supply  and  demand  are  always  equal,  and  laissez  /aire 
works  like  a  charm. 

It  is  so  satisfactory  to  these  institutions  that  occasionally 
when  it  does  not  work  so  well  outside,  and  leaves  working- 
people  very  needy  and  poor,  there  are  friends  of  humanity 
among  these  scholarly  gentlemen  who  are  willing  to  devote 


■_' I  Tin;    MASSES    AM)   THE    MILLIONAIRES. 

their  time  to  composing  recipes  of  shin-bone  .soup,  on  which 
they  assert  that  the  American  laborer  can  live  on  .six  and  a 
fourth  cents  a  day.  This  soup  is  not  recommended  to  mill- 
ionaires ami  professors.  It  is  merely  the  soup  of  political 
economy.  It  is  the  soup  of  science.  It  is  the  soup  of  the- 
ory— it  is  shadow  soup. 

Independently  of  these  facts,  Mr.  Smith's  theory  of  polit- 
ical economy,  invented  bofore  the  discovery  of  steam-power 
and  electricity,  is  fit  to  he  the  monument  of  the  genius  of 
any  man.  It  was  a  great  thing  to  do  in  his  time.  I  speak 
of  it  reverently. 

Hut  this  splendid  and  august  theory,  this  wonderful  and 
mysterious  entity,  called  laissez-faire,  placed  in  practice  on 
American  soil  consecrated  a  century  ago  to  equal  rights, 
has  created  in  that  century  as  vast  a  result  of  human  ine- 
quality— of  contrasted  want  and  wealth,  of  poverty  and 
|iower — as  was  known  to  the  rotten  reign  of  the  Caesars.  It 
has  distorted  the  just  conditions  of  social  life.  It  has  es- 
tranged classes  of  citizens.  It  has  placed  the  wages  of  toil 
in  the  hands  of  idleness.  It  has  made  Cunning  a  prince 
and  Honesty  a  pauper.  It  has  made  Industry  a  slave  to 
feed  Indolence  as  a  parasite.  It  has  written  despair  over 
the  doorways  of  millions  of  homes.  It  has  dwarfed  Child- 
hood with  premature  toil.  It  has  filled  the  breast  of  Labor 
with  discontent,  and  the  streets  of  cities  with  the  tramp  of 
soldiers  in  times  of  peace.  It  has  placed  manufacture  un- 
der the  surveillance  and  protection  of  hired  detectives — the 
Phikertofls  and  the  police.  It  has  laid  the  dead  hand  of 
debt  on  the  ploughman,  and  pawned  the  lands  of  the  \\  esf 
to  the  princes  of  the  East.  It  has  given  to  millionaire  gam- 
blers and  railroad  monarchs  the  power  to  lay  an  embargo 
on    the   wheat   fields   of    the  prairies,  and  "  with  a  stroke 


THE    MASSES    AM)    THE    MILLIONAIRES.  25 

of  a  pen  to  make  famine  crouch  in  the  streets  of  our 
cities."  It  lias  made  tender  women  toil  for  the  pittance 
of  beggars,  or  flee  to  prostitution  for  bread.  It  has  made 
the  anarchist  ami  the  tramp.  It  has  handed  over  to  mer- 
ciless co-operations  the  gigantic  industries  of  the  nation,  to 
unseat  the  will  and  debauch  the  conscience  of  the  nation 
itself.  It  has  enfeebled  the  sense  of  national  honor.  It 
has  made  pillage  for  private  greed  of  the  resources  of  a 
nrigtity  and  generous  people.  It  has  kidnapped  for  monop- 
oly the  government  of  the  United  States. 

Under  this  shooting  Niagara  they  tell  us  that  water  does 
not  flow  downhill ! 

So  much  for  the  immaculate  scheme  of  lalssez  /aire  in 
unrestricted  play  on  American  soil  for  a  century!  This 
precious  professorial  doctrine  should  gladden  American  van- 
ity in  the  stupendous.  Its  achievements  have  been  miracles. 
It  has  shorn  this  nation,  which  began  in  liberty  a  century 
ago,  of  the  power  of  volition — the  Delilah  to  the  American 
giant.  In  the  streets  of  our  cities,  on  election-days,  the  vote 
of  an  American  sovereign  is  bought  for  a  barrel  of  flour, 
because  bread  has  become  more  precious  than  the  ballot. 
In  twenty  States  of  this  Union  we  innocently  ask  which  is 
the  railroad's  candidate  for  Congress.  That  settles  the 
question.     We  are  sure  that  he  is  the  most  honest  man. 

Every  American  industry  passes  rapidly  into  the  hands 
of  monopoly.  The  millions  that  are  made  pass  to  the  pock- 
ets of  the  few,  the  Jack  Sheppards  and  Dick  Turpins  of 
American  Society.  These  are  the  gentlemen  who  emigrate 
to  the  United  States  Senate,  sit  like  kings  at  the  head  of 
syndicates,  give  feasts  like  Lucullus,  purchase  the  admira- 
tion of  a  grateful  people  by  flinging  back  to  them  in  charities 
a  fragment  of  the  spoils  of  which  they  have  robbed  them,  and 


26  THE    MASSES    AND    Till!    MILLIONAIRES. 

lie  in  marble  mausoleums  costing  a  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars,  when  they  are  dead.  Wedonot  envy  them 
living  or  dead.  They,  too,  are  the  victims  of  the  industrial 
morals  of  their  time.  They  sell  "futures;"  they  would  sell 
eternity  if  they  could.  But  while  they  feast  or  lie  in  costly 
and  useless  marbles,  a  million  of  their  honest  countrymen 
are  tramping  for  a  crust. 

No  dead  American  has  a  right  to  lie  under  a  grave-stone 
worth  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  while  a  live 
American  woman  is  starving  in  a  garret. 

The  wealth  of  this  world  belongs  to  the  quick  and  not  to 
the  dead.  Civilization  is  not  rich  enough  to  furnish  mauso- 
leums for  dead  capitalists — or  yachts  for  live  ones.  Its  in- 
dustries should  be  devoted  to  producing  the  necessities  of 
life  as  long  as  one  needy  human  being  exists. 

So  much  for  eighteenth-century  political  economy  in 
nineteenth-century  civilization  !  So  much  for  the  science  of 
an  age  of  dreams  in  an  age  of  steam!  So  much  for  the  re- 
sults of  the  philosophy  of  Adam  Smith  in  the  New  Repub- 
lic! 

How  much  for  its  intelligence?  It  has  not  been  a  suc- 
cess in  practice;  it  may  be  wise  in  theory.  It  may  have 
failed  by  accident.  The  professors  assure  us  that  it  is  wise. 
They  affirm  that  it  is  a  science.  They  assert  that  it  is  the 
only  scheme  by  which  human  beings  can  live  side  by  side 
in  this  world  with  the  assurance  of  peace  and  prosperity. 
They  assert  that  it  is  the  only, scheme  by  which  the  indus- 
trial order  of  the  world  can  be  maintained.  We  should 
not  be  too  hasty  in  disputing  their  verdict.  If  there  is  any- 
thing in  this  world  approaching  omniscience,  it  is  the  brain 
of  a  college  professor  of  political  economy. 

But  let   us  see !     This  science   is  the   alleged   science  of 


THE   MASSES   AND   THE   MILLIONAIRES.  27 

supply  and  demand.  This  principle,  they  say,  will  regulate 
and  adjust  the  conditions  of  human  labor.  This  is  the 
principle  under  which  the  order  of  society  now  exists.  But 
for  two-quarters  of  a  century  the  most  remarkable  and  per- 
sistent feature  of  our  modern  industrial  order  has  been  the 
war  between  capital  and  labor — between  employer  and  em- 
ployed. Ugly  things  called  strikes  and  lock-outs  cover  every 
civilized  land.  Not  a  week,  not  a  day  passes,  but  shops 
and  mills  close,  industries  cease,  and  thousands  and  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  workingmen  turn  to  idleness  in  the 
streets.  The  sensitive  ear  of  humanity  is  assailed  with  the 
clangor  of  human  rage  and  suffering.  The  man  with  the 
purse  is  testing  the  supply  of  labor  to  purchase  it  at  the 
7nost  beggarly  price.  The  man  with  a  tin  bucket  is  testing 
capital  to  get  a  larger  share  of  profit.  The  conflict  is  mer- 
ciless, endless,  deadly.  The  splendid  theory  of  the  profess- 
ors— Supply  and  Demand — works  perfectly  in  the  air,  over 
their  heads.  Like  the  flowTers  that  bloom  in  the  spring  it 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  case. 

The  United  States  Government,  through  its  department 
of  labor,  has  looked  into  this  matter.  It  finds  that  ten  mill- 
ions of  <lays'  labor  are  lost  through  this  conflict  to  the  pro- 
ductive force  of  this  country  in  a  single  year.  It  has  found 
that  the  loss  to  the  country  in  the  same  time  by  this  cause 
is  $300,000,000 — enough  to  support  the  havoc  of  another 
foreign  war  at  nearly  a  million  a  day.  This  is  scientific  econ- 
omy with  a  vengeance.  This  is  the  laissez  faire  of  the  col- 
lege professors  at  full  play. 

There  is  another  feature  of  this  scientific  economy.  They 
call  it  the  dismal  science.  You  see  that  it  has  been  slan- 
dered, that  it  is  a  very  entertaining  study.  Under  this 
beautiful  and  perfect  system,  a  man  or  set  of  men  with  a 


28  THE   MASSES    AND  THE   MILLIONAIRES. 

bank  account  sets  op  a  manufactory  of  products  —  of  food  or 
clothing  or  son])  or  pills  or  iron  nails.  Other  men  and  other 
companies  set  up  other  manufactories  of  these  goods  in 
other  parts  of  the  country.  These  establishments  know 
nothing  accurately  of  the  conditions  of  the  supply  or  demand 
in  these  products.  There  is  no  understanding  between  them. 
There  cannot  he  by  the  nature  of  the  case;  this  is  compe- 
tition. They  know  nothing  accurately  of  the  ability  or 
intentions  of  each  other  in  regard  to  production.  The 
inspired  principles  Of  political  economy  working  in  the  air 
should  teach  them  all  this;  hut  they  do  not.  So  they  man- 
ufacture goods  at  full  steam,  launch  them  by  all  cun- 
ning ways  on  the  great  unknown  sea  of  demand,  the  mar- 
ket; and  each  tries  to  steal  the  trade  and  crush  the  busi- 
ness of  his  rivals;  for  this  is  the  Christian  principle  of 
modern  competition. 

Some  day,  early  in  the  morning,  it  is  found  that  there  are 
more  soap  and  starch  and  shoes  and  sugar  and  suspenders 
and  cotton  goods,  and  iron  nails,  than  anybody  or  every- 
body will  buy.  Pills  have  become,  so  to  speak,  a  "ding 
in  the  market."  Factories  suspend  or  close.  Workmen 
are  turned  into  the  streets.  Without  wages  they  cannot 
buy  these  goods  or  other  goods.  The)-  want  them,  but  can- 
not buy  them.  This  the  professors  of  Mr.  Smith's  political 
economy  call  "Over-production."  Then  other  manufacto- 
ries suspend.  There  is  a  crash — universal  poverty  and  mis- 
ery. But  the  professors  are  prepared  for  tins  also.  They 
give  it  a  scientific  name.  They  call  it  an  "Industrial  De- 
pression." That  vindicates  their  science.  Whenever  you 
wish  to.be  certain  that  a  thing  is  scientific  just  see  if  you 
can  understand  its  names.  If  you  cannot  understand  them, 
then  it  is  a  science. 


THE    MASSES    AM)    T1IK    MILLIONAIRES.  29 

But  this  system  without  organic  unity  or  co-ordination — 
this  chaos  turned  loose  for  human  suffering — is  the  scientific 

scheme  of  political  economy  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  among  civilized  peoples!  One  wonders  how 
this  scheme  looks  to  those  who  dwell  above  the  stars. 

The  poet  Watts  has  told  us  that  there  is  a  land  that  is 
fairer  than  this.  Suppose  from  up  there,  having  a  little 
pardonable  curiosity  as  to  how  things  are  managed  under 
the  "  best  government  the  sun  ever  shone  upon,"  they  should 
send  down  a  celestial  expert  to  investigate  the  United 
States.  Suppose  that  heavenly  messenger  should  arrive  in 
one  of  these  eras  of  industrial  depression.  He  would  float 
with  swift  angelic  wings  over  the  bosom  of  this  broad  land. 
He  would  see  the  prairies  waving  with  golden  grain,  the 
barns  and  bins  heaped  full  with  accumulated  harvests,  the 
pork  fattening  in  the  valleys,  the  cattle  feeding  on  a  thou- 
sand hills.  He  would  see  the  warehouses  and  shops  of  the 
hamlets  and  great  cities  filled  with  the  supplies  of  human 
want — with  stores  of  food  and  clothing  and  luxuries.  He 
would  see  millions  of  strong  men  idle  and  threadbare  and 
hungry  in  the  roads  and  streets — millions  of  sad-eyed  women 
and  children  standing  by  the  shop  windows  looking  long- 
ingly upon  the  piled  objects  of  their  need — which  they 
could  not  buy.  He  would  see  millions  more  with  the  fear 
of  the  future  shadowing  their  faces.  Then  he  would  ask  a 
few  questions  and  return  to  that  upper  world  and  report  to 
its  Sanhedrim.  He  would  tell  the  strange  and  pitiful  tale 
of  want  in  the  midst  of  plenty.  They  would  ask  him  in 
amazement  whether  he  had  received  no  explanation  of  such 
a  strange  condition  of  things  as  this.  He  would  answer 
that  he  had  ;  that  he  had  applied  to  the  college  professors — 
the  political  economists;  that  they  had  made  the  matter 


30  THE  MASSES   AND  THE   MILLIONAIRES. 

quite  clear;  that  these  gentlemen  had  assured  him  that  the 

reason  why  their  fellow-citizens  were  idle  was  because  too 
much  work  had  been  done  in  the  world;  that  the  reason 
why  women  and  children  were  threadbare  and  ragged  was 
because  there  was  too  much  clothing;  the  reason  why  they 
were  homeless  was  because  there  were  too  many  houses; 
that  the  reason  why  men  were  starving  was  because  there 
was  too  much  wheat  and  bread  !  that  there  was  a  "glut  in 
the  market" — an  "industrial  depression!" 

The  Sanhedrim  would  ask  this  angelic  expert  if  he  was 
satisfied  with  this  explanation?  He  would  reply  that  he 
was;  that  the  professors  had  demonstrated  that  the  scheme 
by  which  these  things  happened  was  scientific — that  he  had 
become  a  convert  to  Mr.  Smith.  .  Then  for  the  first  time  in 
the  history  of  Paradise,  they  would  levy  a  tax  to  build  a 
celestial  idiot  asylum,  and  that  fallen  angel  would  become 
its  first  inmate. 

So  much  for  the  intelligence  of  laissez /aire!  How  stands 
its  morality?  In  one  of  the  royal  libraries  of  the  world 
there  was  said  to  be  extant  a  few  centuries  ago  an  ancient 
book,  entitled  a  "  History  of  Snakes  in  Ireland."  That 
volume,  with  its  many  chapters,  and  its  curious  binding  of 
massive  gilt  and  gold,  contained  but  a  single  sentence. 
That  sentence  was  as  follows:  "As  to  snakes  in  Ireland, 
there  are  none  there."  A  similar  volume  would  hold  the 
description  of  the  morality  of  laissez  faire  political.economy 
— the  doctrine  of  the  modern  competitive  system  of  labor. 
There  is  none  there. 

Professor  J.  Stanley  Jevons,  one  of  the  high  priests  of 
this  doctrine,  informs  us  in  one  of  his  books  that  the  first 
step  in  the  study  of  political  economy  is  to  rid  the  mind  of 
the  notion  that  there  are  any  such  things  iu  matters  of 
social  industry  as  "abstract  rights." 


THE   MASSES   AND   THE   MILLIONAIRES.  31 

That  is  the  morality  of  Wall  Street — just  sufficient  to 
keep  out  of  the  penitentiary !  That  is  the  morality  of  the 
Paul  Cliffords  and  Jesse  Jameses,  who  hold  up  railroad 
trains  on  the  western  slopes.  That  is  the  morality  of  Jay 
Gould,  who  buys  up  a  hundred  coal  mines  at  a  stroke  to 
keep  up  the  price  of  the  poor  man's  heat.  These  gentle- 
men are  the  apt  and  searching  pupils  of  Mr.  Jevons.  His 
political  economy  furnishes  the  convenient  principle  of  their 
trade.  They  are  not  troubled  about  ahstract  rights.  They 
are  political  economists. 

A  professor  of  Yale  College,  another  unextinct  pachy- 
derm of  modern  learning,  assures  us  that  "social  classes  owe 
nothing  to  each  other."  Why  is  it  that  when  the  schemes 
of  Satan  are  to  be  upheld  in  this  world,  the  wisdom  of  the 
university  and  pulpit  is  so  often  at  its  call? — slavery,  au- 
tocracy, robbery ! 

When  they  salt  a  California  or  Colorado  gold  mine,  a 
learned  professor  is  always  on  tap  to  sell  it  to  a  London 
syndicate.  It"  these  things  be  modern  learning,  let  us 
abandon  scholarship  and  betake  ourselves  to  the  university 
of  humanity  and  the  streets. 

They  prove  to  us,  with  curious  and  labored  statistics,  that 
the  condition  of  the  laborer  of  to-day  is  better  than  that  of 
the  poor  man  of  history.  They  assail  us  with  the  maudlin 
argument  that  the  modern  workingman  enjoys  comforts  un- 
known to  the  prince  of  a  few  centuries  ago;  that  the  feudal 
lord,  like  his  serf,  slept  on  bulrushes,  and  the  modern 
poor  man  under  a  blanket — as  if  it  were  a  question  of  bed- 
clothes rather  than  of  the  security  of  sleep! 

There  is  a  difference  between  absolute  and  relative  pov- 
erty. The  poverty  of  past  centuries  was  relative.  That  of 
to-day  is  absolute.     The  blankets  and  bread  of  the  nine- 


32  THE    MASSES    AND    THE    MIl.l.loNAIl!  Ks. 

teenth  century  are  better  than  the  rushes  and  crusts  of  the 
middle  ages;  but  humanity  in  the  middle  ages  was  at  least 
certain  of  its  crusts  and  rushes; 

The  morality  of  the  competitive  system,  outside  of  a 
book,  is  the  morality  of  medieval  barbarism  that  Made 
Might  the  basis  of  Right — the  savage  doctrjne  of  fclie  sur- 
vival of  the  strongest,  that  strips  Humanity  naked  at  the 
feel  of  Cunning;  that  places  manhood  at  the  mercy  of 
meanness;  that  asserts  in  the  sunrise  of  the  twentieth  cent- 
ury that  man  is  merchandise — his  heart  and  brain  to  be 
bought  and  sold  in  the  cheapest  market,  like  a  bundle  of 
old  furs  ! 

It  is  the  morality  of  the  Roman  coliseum.  In  that  sav- 
age arena  they  pitted  man  against  his  fellows  to  struggle 
with   grievous  and    ghastly    wounds  to  the  death.      When 

the    gladiator  fell    he  hailed    the    bl ly  tyrant    who  had 

devoted  him  to  death,  " Morituri  te  salutamus  Ocemr!" 
That,  too,  is  the  cry  of  dying  workingmen  to  the  Caesar  of 
Christian  civilization  as  they  fall  in  the  murderous  coliseum 
of  competitive  labor — men  pitted  against  their  fellows  by 
the  alternative  of  life  or  death— men  pitted,  by  the  struggle 
for  bread,  against  steam  and  steel — a  thousand  times  more 
pitiless  than  the  steel  of  the  Roman. 

That  struggle  filled  the  arena  of  a  holiday;  ours  is  the 
perpetual  conflict  over  the  amphitheater  of  a  continent. 

The  Christian  cannot  accuse  the  pagan;  The  murder  of 
his  civilization  is  slower;  its  method  is  finer.  Its  horrors 
are  tempered  to  the  sensitive  neryes  of  a  generation  whose 
lips  are  moist  with  the  professions  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
lowly  Nazarcne ;  but  as  sure  as  this  world  turns,  and 
those  stars  come  out  in  nightly  majesty  into  their  clean 
reproachful  spaces,  beneath  this  thing  called  modern  civili- 


THE   MASSES    AND   Tin:   MILLIONAIRES.  33 

zation — beneath  this  travesty  of  science  that  names  itself 
industral  competition — there  lies  a  barbarism  more  than  pa- 
gan, a  stupidity  that  is  infinite. 

Primitive  man,  the  man  of  the  woods  and  caves,  would 
not  endure  hunger  and  want.  He  emerged  for  conquests 
and  spoils.  "The  ravages  of  Atilla  and  Geneseric  began 
from  the  stomach."  Civilized  want  is  shy  and  modest.  It 
drosses  itself,  if  it  may,  in  the  garb  of  respectability.  It 
smiles  in  the  face  of  the  pitiless  world.  But  underneath 
this  ghastly  complacence  there  exists  to-day  in  the  sharp- 
ened sensibilities  of  modern  men  and  women  a  mass  of  acute 
agonies  such  as  never  pierced   the  heart  of  savage  races. 

The  industrial  competition  under  which  Ave  live  is  ad- 
justed only  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  fortunate.  Those  who 
fall  in  the  struggle  with  the  praises  of  human  dignity  and 
equality  ringing  in  their  ears,  naturally  accuse  the  scheme 
which  has  brought  them  despair.  Victor  Hugo  has  said, 
"The  paradise  of  the  rich  is  the  hell  of  the  poor."  Under 
the  American  flag  there  should  be  no  hungry  man.  On 
American  soil  there  should  be  no  want.  A  great  philoso- 
pher has  said  that  while  there  exists  an  honest  man  without 
enough  to  eat,  no  man  should  have  more  than  enough. 

But  they  tell  us  of  the  freedom  of  contract — the  sacred 
freedom  of  contract  between  wealth  and  the  workingman  ! 
That  is  freedom  indeed! — the  "iron  law  of  wages!" 
Wealth  can  wait;  wages  starve  in  a  day.  The  freedom  of 
contract  with  Death  in  the  scales  against  the  workingman! 

That    is    the  grim   sarcasm  of  the  freedom  of  contract. 

Cardinal  Manning,  the  great  Catholic  Englishman,  de- 
clares that  the  freedom  of  contract  on  which  political  econ- 
omy glorifies  itself  "cannot  be  rightly  said  to  exist,''  He 
appeals  to  the  great  Catholic  Church  to  protect  the  laboring 
poor  who  have  build ed  the  modern  commonwealths. 


34  THE   MASSES    AND   THE   MILLIONAIRES. 

It  was  said  of  the  Italian  Caesar  Borgia,  that  he  was  a 
soldier  every  inch  of  him,  but  a  villain  to  the  last  fiber. 
Caesar  Borgia  said:  "  If  a  man  wishes  for  success  he  must 
not  hesitate  to  make  stepping-stones  of  the  corpses  of  his 
neighbors." 

That  is  the  morals  of  nineteenth-century  Industry. 
A  heart  of  flint  and  a  conscience  as  devoid  of  moral  consid- 
eration as  an  absence  of  all  fear  can  make  it,  are  the  chief 
stock  in  trade  for  success  in  modern  competition. 

But  the  gentlemen  of  the  colleges  assure  us  that  the 
evils  of  the  competitive  scheme  arise  not  from  the  use  but 
from  the  abuse  of  that  system.  They  are  right.  The  unre- 
stricted use  of  that  scheme  anywhere  in  this  world  is  its  abuse. 
That  scheme  carries  within  it  the  seeds  of  its  own  defeat. 
It  insures  combination.  Where  combination  is  possible, 
competition  is  impossible.  The  wages  of  labor  do  not  pur- 
chase back  the  products  of  labor.  There  follows  stagna- 
tion, depression,  wrong. 

That  is  your  beautiful  Adonis  of  laissez  faire  when 
stripped  naked  !  It  is  a  padded  hunchback.  It  has  neither 
a  brain  nor  a  heart.  The  dismal  science!  It  is  the  comic 
science.  It  would  make  the  gods  laugh.  That  scheme  is 
not  for  this  world  ;  it  is  for  some  unknown  planet — peoi^led 
with  professors  of  political  economy. 

Man  is  not  a  commodity.  He  is  not  a  compound  of 
mathematical  quantities  or  chemical  gases.  He  has  a  heart 
and  a  brain,  and  between  these  spring  a  thousand  needs 
and  emotions.  He  has  the  instinct  of  love.  He  is  con- 
quered by  justice.  Any  scheme  for  the  computation  of 
man  which  leaves  out  justice  will  in  this  world  be  a  failure. 

But  the  toilers  of  the  world  are  told  that  they  should  be 
content.     They  are  assured  that  they  do  not  grow  poorer — 


THE    MASSES    AND   THE   MILLIONAIRES.  35 

that  they  receive  more  for  their  work  than  a  century  ago. 
The  answer  is  no  longer  enough.  The  laborer  has  become 
intelligent.  He  is  the  child  of  the  republic  of  free  schools. 
He  has  read  the  Declaration.  He  has  heard  of  the  doc- 
trine of  Equal  Rights.  He  has  taught  it  to  his  children 
until  it  has  become  his  own  faith.  He  has  caught  the  echo 
of  the  words  of  Mirabeau,  "There  are  only  three  ways  of 
acquiring  property,  by  work,  by  begging,  and  by  stealth." 
Civilization  has  increased  his  needs.  He  cannot  live  as  did 
his  fathers,  on  the  bare  floors  of  a  cabin.  The  glitter  of  his 
century  would  fill  him  with  shame.  Respectability  would 
desert  him.  From  his  valley  of  poverty  he  points  to  those 
peaks  'of  wealth  and  answers :  "  Those  splendid  heaps  I 
helped  to  build;  they  are  the  product  of  my  generation.  I 
have  worked  for  thirty  years;  my  children  are  paupers,  I 
have  been  robbed." 

The  laborer  is  right.  He  has  a  cause.  He  is  logical. 
He  is  consistent  with  the  teachings  of  the  republic.  If  he 
is  to  be  content  with  work  and  poverty,  he  should  not  have 
heard  of  the  Declaration.  He  should  have  been  protected 
from  the  New  Testament.  The  only  way  to  make  men  sat- 
isfied with  work  and  poverty  is  to  keep  them  ignorant 
The  slave-masters  have  understood  this  in  every  age.  Free 
schools  and  industrial  pauperism  side  by  side  are  a  mistake. 
The  history  of  labor  from  the  earliest  times  shows  that  cap- 
ital left  to  itself  forces  wages  to  a  bare  subsistence.  A  free 
government  cannot  afford  to  have  its  citizens  dwarfs  and 
paupers. 

The  workingman  understands  all  this.  He  is  fond  of 
telling  the  story  of  the  man  with  the  mule  and  a  patch  of 
ground.  The  man  said  to  the  mule:  "I  will  harness  you  to 
the  plough  and  plough  this  laud,  on  which  I  will  raise  beans. 


36  THE    MASSES    AND    THE    MILLIONAIRES. 

I  will  cat  the  beans;  you  shall  have  the  stalks."  The  mule 
.said  to  the  man,  "  That  will  uot  be  fair;  I  should  have  some 
beans."  "You  are  unreasonable;"  said  the  man,  "your 
lather  was  contented  to  eat  thistles  all  his  life."  "That  is 
true,"  said  the  mule;  "but  my  father — he  was  an  ass." 

If  there  were  any  fair  distribution  of  the  products  of 
human  labor  there  would  go  out  from  all  the  homes  of  this 
land  men  and  women  to  purchase  abundance  of  the  neces- 
saries of  life.  There  would  be  none  of  the  "alternating 
fevers  and  chills"  of  our  present  industrial  order.  There 
would  be  no  "gluts  of  the  market" — no  "industrial  depres- 
sions." 

Three  centuries  before  our  era,  the  great  Chinese  sage, 
Meneius,  taught  that  uncertainty  as  to  the  means  of  exist- 
ence is  the  most  important  factor  in  the  demoralization  of 
a  people.  jVt  the  end  of  two  centuries  of  unrestricted  com- 
petition, three-fourths  of  the  people  of  the  most  prosperous 
commonwealth  of  the  world  are  insecure  of  the  means  of 
subsistence.  We  have  approached  the  limit  of  the  great 
speculative  opportunities  for  wealth.  Doubt  paralyzes  the 
limbs  of  industry.  Dread  poisons  the  sweetness  of  the 
world.  Fear  sits  like  a  specter  at  our  brief  banquet  of  life. 
Gloom  shadows  the  way  of  the  toiling  millions.  What  kind 
of  a  civilization  is  that  whose  heart  is  Fear? 

Upon  the  results  of  this  scheme  of  aggregated  and  aggre- 
gating wealth  in  the  hands  of  individuals  and  corporations 
on  the  political  morality  of  the  nation,  I  need  not  speak. 
They  are  too  familiar. 

One-eighth  of  the  total  wealth  of  the  United  States  be- 
longs to  the  monopoly  of  transportation,  the  railroads.  Its 
use  in  these  hands  for  oppression  and  corruption  is  notori- 
ous.    American  statesmanship,  like  American  sovereignty. 


THK    MASSES    AND    THE    MILLIONAIRES.  87 

lias  retired  into  the  offices  of  the  corporations.  The  United 
States  Senate  sits  directly  or  indirectly,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, for  "vested  rights." 

We  have  heard  of  government  by  kings,  by  oligarchies, 
by  aristocrats.  We  began  a  century  ago  as  a  government 
by  the  people.  We  have  ended  by  giving  the  world  a  new 
study  in  political  science — government  by  corporations. 
AVlieu  the  Pennsylvania  railroad  has  no  more  business  to 
transact  in  the  legislature  of  that  State,  it  is  said  that  that 
political  body  adjourns.. 

The  late  Mr.  Tweed,  of  New  York,  had  an  acute  appre- 
ciation of  American  politics.  He  manipulated  a  city  and 
stole  fifty  millions  of  dollars.  He  recorded  his  vocation  on 
the  register  of  Sing-Sing  as  that  of  a  statesman!  He  "got 
even  "  with  his  friends  outside. 

What  is  the  conclusion?  How  will  it  end?  The  Duke 
of  Weimar,  looking  upon  the  schemes  of  Napoleon  in  the 
height  of  his  power,  said,  "  This'  will  not  last;  it  is  unjust." 

I  am  not  here  to  picture  the  details  of  an  ideal  common- 
wealth. There  will  come  other  days  and  there  will  be 
other  gods.  When  civilized  man  is  less  a  barbarian,  the 
glitter  of  gold,  the  red  waumpum  of  the  savage,  will  not 
intoxicate  his  senses.  He  will  cease  to  be  drunken  with 
the  lust  of  vulgar  advantage  over  his  fellow-men.  The 
triumphs  of  the  brain  will  measure  his  ambition.  The 
triumphs  of  justice  .will  ease  his  heart.  The  victories  of 
art,  the  splendor  of  noble  affections,  will  fill  his  dreams. 
That  which  is  said  here  does  not  concern  Utopian  fancies. 
While  there  is  human  weakness  there  will  be  human  suffer- 
ing. But  organized  wrong  is  curable.  It  should  be  assailed. 
There  are  ideas  which,  intrenched  for  centuries,  stop  the 
inarch  of  our  race.     They  are  superstitions.     Human  soci- 

.'570590 


38  THE    MASSES   ANli   THE    MILLIONAIRES. 

ety  has  the  right  to  examine  from  time  to  time  the  founda- 
tions on  which  it  rests.  It  has  the  obligation  to  repair  or 
renew  these  foundation's  when  they  have  become  rotten. 

The  power  of  human  governments  is  co-extensive  with 
the  welfare  of  peoples.  It  is  limited  by  that  welfare.  To 
that  limit  it  must  approach.  "Salus  popxlli  supremo,  lex  est" 
is  one  of  the  oldest  maxims  of  human  government.  The 
open  secret  of  history  is  that  justice  and  virtue  lie  deeper 
than  institutions;  that  honesty  is  the  preserver  of  nations. 
Beyond  all  laws,  beyond  all  government,  beyond  all  insti- 
tutions, beyond  all  vested  rights,  beyond  all  sneers,  lie  the 
indefeasible  rights  of  man. 

Before  nothing  less  than  the  intrenched  citadel  of  these 
rights  in  the  organization  of  human  states,  will  the  march 
of  humanity  pause.  They  are  demanded  by  the  conscience 
of  mankind.     Their  security  is  the  goal  of  the  race. 

What  are  these  rights?  That  oldest  of  the  economists 
the  wisest  of  the  Greeks,  Aristotle,  treating  of  the  natural 
wealth  of  the  world — "the  source  and  raw  material  of  all 
other  wealth" — summed  it  up  in  a  single  descriptive  phrase, 
"  the  bounty  of  nature." 

Supported  by  the  great  teachers  of  our  kind,  I  affirm,  as 
incontrovertible  propositions  commending  themselves  to  the 
instinctive  justice  of  man,  that  the  world  belongs  to  the 
living  race;  that  the  bounty  of  nature  is  the  inheritance  of 
all ;  that  the  wealth  made  by  the  common  forces  of  any  civil- 
ization is  the  common  wealth.  I  affirm  that  the  human 
hand  is  as  sacred  as  the  human  brain.  I  affirm  that  the 
robbery  of  Cunning  is  as  malignant  as  the  robbery  of  Force. 
I  affirm  that  every  problem  of  the  dealings  between  men  is 
amoral  problem.  I  affirm  that  no  economic  scheme  for 
this  world  which  ignores  abstract  rights  is  a  science.     I  af- 


THE    MASSES    AND    THE    MILLIONAIRES.  39 

firm  that  man's  struggle  should  be  with  nature  and  not 
with  his  kind.  I  affirm  that  civilization  without  justice  is 
a  failure. 

If  for  the  realization  of  the  rights  here  intimated,  it  is 
necessary  to  enter  the  gateway  of  the  future  by  the  partial 
or  the  absolute  industrial  co-operation  of  men,  it  is  History 
that  has  led  us  to  this  door.  There  is  no  longer  choice  as 
to  changing  the  route.  The  ruggedness  of  the  present  path 
lias  turned  to  an  impossible  steep.  Struggling  humanity, 
hungry  and  ragged  in  the  presence  of  the  riches  it  has  cre- 
ated, has  grown  sick  of  its  tyrants.  The  purpose  of  peo- 
ples is  greater  than  the  philosophy  of  the  schools ;  and  the 
peoples  are  saying,  not  "There  should  be,"  but,  "There  shall 
be  a  change! " 

h'  the  liberty  of  individual  enterprise  means  only  liberty 
for  millionaires  and  hard  luck  for  the  masses,  the  world  will 
turn  once  more  to  its  primitive  dream,  the  democracy  of 
labor.  That  way,  at  least,  lie  justice  and  equality.  That 
way  lies  escape  from  the  lie  of  civilization — the  preaching 
of  its  pulpits  denied  by  the  practice  of  its  marts.  That 
way  lie  the  mighty  hopes  and  the  mighty  instincts  of  our 
race.  That  way  lies  the  solidarity  of  our  kind.  That  way 
lies  a  dawn. 

When  the  vision  of  their  wrong  is  a  little  nearer,  when 
its  remedy  seems  clear,  the  citizens  of  this  commonwealth 
will  not  falter  in  the  fight.  Two  wars  for  human  freedom 
they  have  already  fought.  Two  triumphs  for  ideals  they 
have  won.  The  soil  of  this  continent  is  consecrated  to  the 
solution  of  the  problem  of  absolute  justice  for  man. 

The  toiling  millions  of  the  earth  look  toward  the  Great 
Republic.  It  has  given  the  world  the  spectacle  of  political 
government  based   upon   the  equality  of  manhood.     There 


40  THE    MASSES    AND    THE    MILLIONAIRES, 

is  awaited  at  its  hands  the  spectacle  of  industry  based  <>n 
the  brotherhood  of  Toil,  Over  the  redoubts  of  the  Past, 
over  the  bastions  of  Wrong,  over  the  dreams  of  the  Old, 
bearing  aloft  the  flag  of  the  Declaration  and  the  doctrines 
of  the  Nazarette,  Americans  will  be  the  first  to  scale  the 
heights  and  enter  the  citadel  of  the  New  Time. 


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